A DAILY train service between Wagga and Albury, with a parallel Albury-Wagga train, could be worthwhile.
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We need to research the idea properly. And that doesn’t mean bringing in an expensive city-based company to prepare a costly report, like the ill-advised and ill-fated Wagga transport study.
Who are the potential passengers? By what time will these passengers need to reach their destination? Where will Wagga passengers start their own journey to the station, and where do they need to go in Albury? What time do they need to return? Where do Albury passengers want to go in Wagga?
All transport services in NSW are subsidised by the NSW Government. Few XPT travellers pay full fare.
There are many categories of concession fares, and welfare recipients who may qualify for free travel.
Seniors pay $2.50 for daily Opal Card travel in “metropolitan” Sydney. From Scone south to Berry, and out to Goulburn and Bathurst, seniors pay no more than $2.50 per day.
Wagga seniors would expect the Opal Card system to apply on the Albury train, like their metropolitan friends. The Albury train would surely draw a crowd of $2.50 seniors each day!
Workers in metropolitan Sydney likewise enjoy capped Opal Card fares, so my point is that without massive government funding this idea will not float.
The greatest users of a daily service would very likely be the people who live along the way, in smaller towns, and the countryside in between. Which makes a train service fairly inefficient. Railway stations are few and far between, requiring a car journey to the station. Unless the train times were really convenient, the car driver would probably drive on, instead of the passengers using the train service.
And when the train gets to Albury Railway Station, is that where the passengers want to be? The additional cost, and time, of changing to a town bus or paying for a taxi starts to make the train service idea a little impractical.
A coach service could be a more useful answer, although I think that a low-entry bus of the type that Busabout uses for Wagga services would attract more aged and wheelchair passengers, and mothers with prams.
Depending on who the passengers are likely to be, according to the survey, the bus could begin its journey at, say, CSU where it would pick up students going to courses at the Thurgoona campus for the day, then collecting passengers at bus stops in the main street and near the hospital before proceeding down the highway with stops not only in towns, but at road intersections where people need to board along the way.
Approaching Albury, the bus could divert via the CSU campus, then proceed via Lavington and into Albury’s shopping precinct. Albury passenger destinations may require a diversion past the hospital.
Having arrived in Dean Street by 9am, the bus could then return to Wagga, leaving Albury at a convenient 10am for Albury passengers who wish to come to Wagga to shop, returning on the afternoon bus at about 3pm, or on the last Albury bus at say, 6pm.
A “fast train”? How would that serve The Rock, Yerong Creek, Gerogery, Table Top, and other country locations along the way? Let’s look at all the options before putting a daily service to Albury in the “too hard basket”.